Set it up

Look in your coursebook and choose an interesting speaking activity. This could be one that you have already done in class or one that you are about to do. For example, the Real Life sections in the Cutting Edge books would be good for this – they have a lot of functional language and situations that could become quite dramatic with some added sound effects.

Example speaking activity script:

A and B are neighbours. A has been playing loud music after 10pm and B can’t get to sleep. At A’s door…
A: Yeah?
B: Er hi, look it’s 10pm. I’m trying to get to sleep.
A: Oh right.
B: Please, could you turn it down? Your music is really loud…
A: Oh sure, I’m so sorry. Here, is that better?

and so on…

Running order

Ask your students to think of everyday situations where they might have to speak to someone else to get something done. This should ideally focus on situations where the someone else is a stranger, so something like, asking your neighbour to turn down their music, asking to borrow a pen at the post office, getting someone to swap seats at the cinema. You can also suggest some scenarios, depending on the coursebook activities you want to focus on.

Give them a particular scenario, like when asking the neighbour to turn down their loud music. Ask your student to work in pairs to prepare a short dialogue based on this scenario.

Monitor and provide help with language as necessary. You may need to help with things like pronunciation and intonation in making polite requests (…could you turn it down?), pronunciation of particular words, emphasis (…your music is really loud).

Tell your students that they are going to perform their dialogues to each other in groups of four (made up of two pairs), but that you are going to play a sound effect based around Halloween that they must work into their performances. At this point, you may wish to give your students a moment to anticipate the sounds or not, depending on how challenging you want the activity to be.

Get the students to perform in groups and play one of these sound effects at a point of your choosing:

Encore

For homework get your students to write up their dialogue as they performed it, including the interruption. You might ask them to record their performances using any mobile devices they have.

For a few more Halloween related activities, you can check out my teaching blog.